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LittleBigPlanet/Gameplay
Development Marketing Both Sony Computer Entertainment and Media Molecule have undertaken a robust marketing campaign in the run-up to the game's release. In North America, SCEA have partnered with several of the major online retailers including Amazon.com, GameStop, Circuit City, Best Buy, and Game Crazy to offer unique bonus gifts to customers pre-ordering the game from the selected retailers. These gifts include codes to access additional in-game characters, a sticker book, a burlap pouch for storing the game disk in and an official game guide published by Brady Games. The game's developers have also created retailer-specific trailers for Amazon.com and Wal-Mart. These videos feature in-game footage of levels featuring the retailer's logo built using the in-game toolset and have been embedded into LittleBigPlanet's product page on their respective websites. In the UK, SCEE have partnered with Play.com to offer a downloadable Nariko character to customers who pre-order the game. Also, a temporary shop has been set-up in Manchester's town centre where people will be able to play the game before its release. Release A demo version of the game was planned for release on the PlayStation Network in the fourth quarter of 2007, but was delayed until 2008. Original announcements pointed to a full release early in 2008, but Sony later said that the game had been delayed until September 2008 in the UK. During the Sony PlayStation Day on May 6, 2008 in London, Sony announced that the game would be delayed by one month, and was finally scheduled for release on October 24, 2008 in North America, October 22, in Europe and Australasia, October 24 in the UK and Ireland and October 30 in Japan. In the UK Pegi rated it a 7+, and in USA ESRB rated it an E. Recall On 17 October 2008, SCEE started a world-wide recall of the game and announced that the game's release would be delayed further worldwide, and later that it would be delayed by around one week for North America and the UK & Ireland. SCEE stated that On the same day, SCEA made a similar announcement along with confirmation that they will start sending stock to North American retailers in the week beginning 5th Novemeber. (this is a confirmed release date) Reaction Previews The unveiling of LBP at the 2007 Game Developers Conference elicited numerous positive reactions. In his BBC News blog, technology editor Darren Waters wrote, "LittleBigPlanet is perhaps one of the most dazzling demos I've seen in the last 10 years." IGN described the game as "beautiful" and reports that "Even in the presence of Home, Sony's impressive new community software, LittleBigPlanet stole the show at Phil Harrison's Game 3.0 practice conference, and was the thing that everyone was talking about." 1UP writes that "There are plenty of questions remaining about LittleBigPlanet … but it's clear from the reaction to the game so far that it has already won over many fans" and that "this could be something very special." Slashdot Games editor Michael Zenke suggested that the game could be the PlayStation 3's killer application, saying, "if these elements are for real, this is the reason to buy PlayStation 3". Even Reggie Fils-Aime, the president of Nintendo of America, praised the product, though he was unsure how the game would fare on the PS3. Reception The reception of LittleBigPlanet has been excellent. The first major publication to review LBP was the UK edition of PlayStation Official Magazine. In their November edition they gave the game a perfect score of 10/10. More recently, the game has been reviewed by other critics. IGN US gave the game a 9.5/10, while their UK and AU websites gave the game 9.7/10 and 9.2/10 respectively. The game currently has a Metacritic aggregated score of 94/100 from 31 reviews.